Monday Muckreads: 10/14/13

In Arizona:

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne announced in an opinion last week changes for the state’s election process, which moves Arizona to a two-tiered voting system.

Starting next year, voters in Arizona who register with a federal form – which does not require proof of U.S. citizenship – will be required to use a federal ballot and only vote in federal elections. Voters who register with a state form and provide a proof of citizenship will be required to use a state ballot and can vote in federal, state and local elections.

The Arizona Republic said, “The move is expected to affect 900 people and cost an extra $250,000 in Maricopa County alone” to design separate federal and state ballots.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ruled that Arizona officials cannot enforce a portion of SB 1070, the state’s strict immigration law that’s been the subject of numerous legal challenges and reached all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

According to the East Valley Tribune, the court called a portion of the bill that would punish people who transport or house undocumented immigrants “so badly crafted as to be unintelligible.”

Attorney General Tom Horne and Gov. Jan Brewer disagreed with the ruling and said the state plans to appeal the decision.

Nationally:

The Center for Investigative Reporting and KQED collaborated on a multimedia investigative series about the lack of access to food in California’s San Joaquin Valley, a place that produces a majority of the country’s fruits and nuts.

The Boston Globe highlights a common problem in the Boston area: the struggle to find a primary care physician. Their findings show that it “takes an average of 39 days for new patients to get an appointment with a family physician and 50 days to see an internist.”

The problem it projected to get worse in the future, with fewer medical students interested in becoming primary care physicians. Much of this problem could be related to salary, according to the report: primary care doctors bring in an average salary of $220,000, while specialists bring in $400,000 annually.